The Stage (album)

In interviews prior to the album's release, rhythm guitarist Zacky Vengeance described the album as "pretty much completely aggro".[5] The Stage has been described musically as progressive metal[6][7] and heavy metal.[8] The band continued to experiment with this album; "Sunny Disposition" features a section accompanied with brass instruments, while "God Damn" is one of the heaviest tracks on the album and has one of the most aggressive and fast-paced thrash metal riffs. The song also has a melodic bridge led by acoustic guitars, with M. Shadows' aggressive vocal style over it, creating a contrast. "Creating God" utilizes a D major scale over a D minor progression in order to give the chorus a unique sound. In the choruses, M. Shadows sings the vocal line around a D major scale, while Synyster Gates plays the guitar riff around a D harmonic minor scale. This technique is then used again in Gates' solo, where he imitates the vocal line sung by Shadows in the chorus. The song is in the key of D minor.

"Roman Sky" includes several orchestrated arrangements, similar to the ones throughout various songs appearing on "City of Evil". "Higher" is one of the album's most melodic and progressive tracks, it features a female choir near the end creating a very unusual and atmospheric outro harmonized with synthetizers, piano and a drifting bass line. The band's longest song to date "Exist", in which Neil deGrasse Tyson makes an audio spoken word appearance at the end, which he wrote specifically for the album, showcases the band's further experimentation in progressive metal. Other songs also show elements of thrash metal and progressive metal, with some songs using fast drum patterns, blast beat and rapid riff structure, along with thrash-style shouting at some points. The album also includes an influence from their earlier metalcore style, including metalcore-style riffs and breakdowns, with "Paradigm" going as far as to include screamed vocals. The song "Fermi Paradox" has a black metal influence in the instrumental, with the blast beats and guitar work, but the band chose to put clean vocals over it.[9]

The Stage is Avenged Sevenfold's first conceptual album (2010's Nightmare was planned to be a concept record, but such plans were nixed following The Rev's death). The album's concept is based on the future having such themes such as artificial intelligence and self-destruction of society, it includes a variety of science-driven themes including nuclear warfare ("Sunny Disposition"), a failed NASA test ("Higher"), Giordano Bruno's death sentence ("Roman Sky"), space exploration ("Fermi Paradox"), simulation hypothesis ("Simulation") and religion ("God Damn", "Angels"), all of these themes and events taking place on the same "stage": Earth. Thematically, the album deals with mankind's relationship with technology. Lyrical content of the album was inspired by the writings of Carl Sagan and Elon Musk.[10]

In an interview with Rolling Stone, vocalist M. Shadows commented as examples: "The song "Paradigm" talks about nanobots – and how they can potentially be used to cure diseases and help you live forever. But how much of a human being would you be at that point? If you're 70 percent machine and 30 percent human, are you going to lose yourself? Or a song like "Creating God" – computers are getting smarter and smarter, and all of a sudden they're becoming your god; they're so much more intelligent than you, you seem like apes to them, or ants".[11]

The title-track "The Stage" talks about humanity and the way people have treated each other throughout history. It speaks from the perspective of a man growing up and realizing corruption of the world.

Closing track "Exist" was made as the band's approach to sonically represent The Big Bang, with the instrumental part in the first section (0:00-6:55) representing the creation of the universe and the second section (6:56-15:41) of the song representing the creation of Earth.[11]

"-": denotes an unranked list

• M. Shadows – lead vocals, additional guitars on "Sunny Disposition"
• Zacky Vengeance – rhythm guitar, backing vocals, lead vocals on "Runaway"
• Synyster Gates – lead guitar, backing vocals, co-lead vocals on "As Tears Go By", classical guitar on "The Stage", 12-string guitar on "Wish You Were Here"
• Johnny Christ – bass, backing vocals
• Brooks Wackerman – drums

• Papa Gates – outro guitar solo (track 6)[33]
• Jason Freese – keyboards (tracks 1, 2, 8, 10, 11)
• Brian Kilgore – percussion (tracks 4, 8, 9)
• Eric Gorfain – strings (track 5)
• River James Sanders, Tennessee James Baker – backing vocals (track 7, 8)
• Valary Sanders – nurse (track 7)
• Michael Suarez – additional sound effects (track 7)
• Angelo Moore, Walter Kibby – additional horns (track 3)
• Neil deGrasse Tyson – spoken word (track 11)
• Warren Fitzgerald – additional guitar ("Runaway")
• John Krovoza – cello
• Ian Walker – contrabass
• Stephanie O'Keefe – french horn
• David Ralicke, Nick Daley – trombone
• Jordan Kats – trumpet
• Leah Katz - viola
• Daphne Chen – violin

• Joe Barresi and Avenged Sevenfold – production
• Andy Wallace, Josh Wilbur – mixing[34]
• Bob Ludwig – mastering
• Paul Suarez – mixing engineer
• Ignacio Lecumberri – assistant mixing engineer
• Nick Fainbarg – technical engineer

• Larry Jacobson – management
• Samantha Tripses – management
• Mitra Darab – Capitol Records marketing
• Hannah Keefe – Capitol Records marketing